Posts Tagged ‘Gearpunk’

This is just an addendum to the photo set of the Gearpunk dice. We’ve ordered some in a black nickel finish, and though we don’t have all of them in stock yet thanks to a factory mistake, we have a few. May as well show some beauty photos, right?

If you’ve perused the photo library of the Gearpunk dice, you might have noted that the Zinc-finished dice are rather shiny, especially when compared to the brass and copper variants.

Gearpunk D10 Decader Antiqued Copper

Gearpunk D10 Decader Antiqued Brass/Bronze

Gearpunk D10 Decader Zinc

I’m partial to the antiqued look, both because I like the more rustic aesthetic, and because the antiquing makes the dice easier to read. Since the factory managed to mangle our order’s quantities, we wound up with over 100 extra shiny Zinc D10 “decader” dice. One of them seemed like the perfect test subject, then, to see what sort of simple inking options I might have. I’ll be trying other experiments, but this is the initial test, which I’m pleased with.

I used Speedball “super black” India ink, water and a small hobby paintbrush.

Though I picked up mine in a set of three at the local hobby store for $2. It doesn’t need to be an expensive brush, just one that will hold a point when wet and is about 1/8″ in diameter or so.

I put eight drops of water and three drops of ink in a plastic cup for this experiment. I diluted the ink to give myself a little time for the ink to dry. When used straight, the ink dries fairly quickly, and I wanted a little wiggle room in case I messed up. This experiment really doesn’t need a lot of ink, either. I would have been fine with 1 drop of ink and 2 drops of water in retrospect, though it’s not a bad thing to have a bit more than necessary… and it’s not like a few drops really put much of a dent in my supply. That’s the nice thing about this ink; it’s great to use, even when diluted.

I used the brush to pick up a bit of the ink, then gently applied it to the background behind the numbers on the die face. The water tension naturally makes the ink settle into the recesses, though I did need to guide it around a little. I added a little with a light touch to the other recesses in the design, and brushed lightly to help spread things around and get some ink in the smaller details around the edges and corners.

Since the ink does run a bit, I did only one face at a time, the one facing up and its edges. Inking the adjacent faces would mean the ink would pool largely on the downhill side of the contours, and while I didn’t want a flat color, neither did I want it heavily lopsided.

Each face, then, took a few minutes to dry. That’s not too bad, and if I were doing a set of dice, one face at a time per die, by the time I finished with the last die’s upright face, the first die could be ready to roll over and do the next face. It’s best if you get each application dry before doing the next, so that timing might not work perfectly, but all in all, it wasn’t too much of a wait.

I’m sorry I didn’t have my camera handy to take photos while I was working, this project had to fit in some of my very constrained time last night and I wasn’t properly prepared.

Here are some photos of the finished die next to one of its unprocessed kin, in a variety of lighting situations (including one that’s just a color correction, taking the yellows out of an indoor photo).

I think it turned out well, much better than I had expected. I’ll be doing more experiments when I can, but this was a good start, I think.

It’s been quiet around here lately. I’m still looking for work, and Unemployment is about exhausted. So, I still don’t have the luxury of spending much time here, and I’m… significantly stressed. Still, this is worth noting. The Gearpunk Dice that we’ve been waiting for since last year are finally here, so we’ll be shipping them out to everyone as soon as we can process them. Thank you for your interest and patience!

It’s worth noting that there are two photos of each single die. This is to show them in different lighting and against different surfaces, in this case, black leather and aged painted concrete.

Yes, I still have things I’d like to write about games, game design, art and photography… but I’m neck deep in the whole “finding a job” thing. I promise, we’re not going dark here at the blog, we’re just really busy.

There are some other photos kicking around on Pinterest over here, if you want to see some more details of the prototype coins. I’m really looking forward to getting these little gems made and sent out to people. They have a lot of tinkering potential, I think, being coins that can actually function as gears. The Gearchips were toothed well, but these Gearcoins have a hole in the middle for a pin, so they can be pinned to something and spin freely.

It’s going to be fun, seeing what people come up with.

Thanks, everyone! Please spread the word if you have a moment. This one, like the Tinker Dice campaign, will definitely benefit from stretch goals, so the more the merrier!

Oh, and we got some word that the Gearpunk Dice should be done soon. We’re getting the latest prototypes in the mail Monday, and I’m hoping we can approve them for full production. They sent us a photo to tide us over, but I’ll post some beauty shots as soon as I can.

Next time, I’m going to try to finish up a bit of a rant about Marvel Puzzle Quest… again.

It’s been a great 2013, with our two Kickstarter projects doing well, thank you everyone! We’re still shipping out the Tinker Decks and the Tinker Dice, but we’re also looking forward to what else we may be able to do. To that end, we’d like to get some feedback from those of you who might be interested in what we’re plotting. (And if you’re one of the kind souls who come here for my other assorted posts about gaming, game design, art and photography, I’ll do more of those, too. I’ve been itching to do some “regular” blogging. Lots of ideas rattling around here. This Kickstarter stuff might just be static, sorry, but we’ll get some more signal in here, too.)

So, first and foremost, we’re planning a new campaign just for the Gearchips that we offered in the Tinker Deck campaign. We do have a few leftovers, but there is some interest in more.

These Gearchips are poker chip sized, ready for play with the decks… or whatever else. My kids just love playing with little metal gears, and they can serve well as tokens in a variety of games. They are 39mm, so they can even stand in as wreck markers in WarMachine for 40mm base units or the like. We’ll fire that up in the next month or so, since a lot of the groundwork is ready to go. We need to run a campaign because we still have to make sure we have enough interest to get a “print run” of the coins. We’re not yet far enough ahead of the curve to just go get more coins and hope the demand happens later.

Secondly, we’re planning a set of Gearchip-like game coins. Specifically, they will be gear-edged coins, all built to mesh with each other, no matter which denomination. They will have square holes in the center for use either as driver gears with a square axle, or to be able to turn freely on a round axle. They can function in any game or situation that calls for coins or chips of different denominations (say, 7 Wonders, Race for the Galaxy or Magic the Gathering), or as parts to a machine, albeit a simple, low powered one. These won’t be highly hardened, tempered, true machine-ready gears, just toys. Still, that’s enough to have fun with.

We have some questions on these, though. What sort of metal finish? How to simplify the sale of them in batches, while still allowing some customizability to allow for use in a variety of games and situations? We’ve been very impressed with the Gearchip coins, and we want to see how we can riff on the idea. If you’ve a moment, we’d love some answers to this survey or comments down below. (For all the surveys, you can select more than one option if you wish.)

Third, we’re looking at producing another deck. We had a lot of fun with the Tinker Deck, and have other ideas we’d like to experiment with, if it’s worth it. We’re not at all sure that we’ll go with Bicycle as the printer again, though. They do good work, no doubt, and they are really good people to work with, but the print run of 2500 or so decks is a significant monetary hurdle. It’s not impossible, to be sure, but there are other options that we’re considering. These, of course, don’t carry the brand name or the instant quality assurance and recognition, which can be a different sort of barrier. If you’ve an opinion (or recommendation) on printers, please let us know.

We’ve also considered making the Tinker pair of decks available in plastic, though that will definitely mean going with a different printer. We’re not seriously looking at Kem custom cards, as their prices are prohibitive. We’re looking at non-US printers for this (unless someone in the ‘States can compete).

Speaking of reprints, we did order some extras of the Tinker Dice, but if there’s enough demand, we may well do another campaign for those to get another batch going… though we’d spice it up a bit by offering new finishes. We’d simplify the ordering scheme, though, since it was overly complex this last time.

We’re also seriously considering rebooting the initial, failed, plastic Tinker Dice campaign, though we acknowledge that metal dice just seem to fit the theme better… and are in some ways, just plain cooler. Still, plastic dice have their charms, and are less likely to destroy your gaming table. They would be less costly, too.

There’s also a temptation to do some sort of token set for wargaming… but we need to figure out the best approach for that. Some of those templates are big, and might get prohibitively expensive to do in metal.

So thanks for chiming in, and for your support thus far!

…and we’ll get back to a game design post here in a little bit. There’s this one on worldbuilding I’ve had in mind for a while now…

We’re in the final 48 hours of the Tinker Deck project. It’s a crucial time when we might just be able to pull off the Rusty Tinker Deck as a companion to the original Tinker Deck. It’s close, very close, we just need a bit of a push over the critical $20,000 mark.

Please spread the word and let people know we’re making the core Tinker Deck! We’d love to offer the Rusty variant too, if at all possible.

Some previews of the Rusty Tinker Deck below, as well as the original deck (click on an image to see a bigger version, smaller versions at the end of the post if you want them):

Thanks, everyone! We’re most appreciative of anything you can do to spread the word and help us get to make the Rusty Tinker Deck along with the core deck. It really is a crucial time, with the last, big stretch goal in view. We can get there, we just need some help in getting the word out to interested parties and getting that last bit of funding in. If you’ve been on the fence, it’s a great time to jump in. We have some great extra “Add On” items available, and some really sweet cards.

It’s not final, since we’re asking them to make the edge gear teeth mesh with neighboring coins, and a couple of other tweaks on the perimeter, but I’m pretty happy with what we’re seeing on these so far. It almost makes me want to make a bigger range of coins…

These are 39mm in diameter, 3.5mm in depth. Poker chip size… but with teeth. Literally.